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INTRODUCTION TO LORD OF THE FLIES - by William Golding

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Essential Questions:

What is the nature of man? What are the qualities of

effective leadership? How does one effectively

govern? Upon what, primarily, does

survival most depend? How quickly can civilization

erode into savagery?

More Essential Questions…

What events allow our human flaws to be revealed?

What do our flaws reveal about us? How does Golding use setting and

characters in Lord of the Flies to express his ideas about human nature?

What should you come to understand by the end of this unit? People’s baser instincts are often

stronger than their nobler ones in creating human societies.

The defects in society are related to the defects in human nature.

Novelists often use their fiction to make statements about their personal or political beliefs.

Lord of the Flies

The novel takes place during a fictional atomic war.

A group of British schoolboys are flown out of their country to protect them from the horrors of war.

However, their plane crashes, killing all the adults on board.

The boys remain stranded on the tropical island to fend for themselves.

Lord of the Flies facts

Most of the characters, actions Most of the characters, actions and objects in the novel and objects in the novel symbolize larger ideassymbolize larger ideas

Golding’s novel deals with the Golding’s novel deals with the conflict between the rational conflict between the rational mind and primal instinct, mind and primal instinct, representing a move from representing a move from civiliazation to savagery.civiliazation to savagery.

All of Golding’s novel takes place on the remote tropical island.

Draw two columns in your notes

Words associated

with instinct

Words associated with the

mind ???????????? ???????????? ????????????

???????????? ???????????? ????????????

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Philosophical Background:

Rousseau Contrary to his earlier work,

Rousseau (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712) claimed that the state of nature is brutish condition without law or morality, and that there are good men only as a result of society's presence.

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“The Social Contract”

Because he can be more successful facing threats by joining with other men, he has the impetus to do so. He joins together with his fellow men to form the collective human presence known as "society." "The Social Contract" is the "compact" agreed to among men that sets the conditions for membership in society.

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The Noble Savage In his early writing, Rousseau

contended that man is essentially good, a "noble savage" when in the "state of nature" (the state of all the other animals, and the condition man was in before the creation of civilization and society), and that good people are made unhappy and corrupted by their experiences in society.

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The Noble Savage

He viewed society as "artificial" and "corrupt" and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.

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Nature vs. Nurture

The nature versus nurture debate concerns the relative importance of an individual's innate qualities (nature), versus personal experiences and environmental influence on how one acts (nurture) in determining or causing individual differences in physical and behavioral traits.

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“Tabula Rasa” The view that humans acquire all or

almost all their behavioral traits from "nurture" is known as tabula rasa or blank slate.

In Locke's philosophy, tabula rasa was the theory that at birth the (human) mind is a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences. This implies one can change drastically by experience.

What is the influence of Beelzebub?

• Beelzebub comes from a Greek word that means ‘lord of flies’

• Beelzebul also means Lucifer. Beelzebul claims to cause destruction through tyrants, to cause demons to be worshipped among men, to excite priests to lust, to cause jealousies in cities and murders, and to bring on war.